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4 Soccer Shooting Drills for Youth Players

With these 4 basic soccer shooting drills you will help your young players to improve their finishing in front of the goal.

We are often amazed by the seeming simplicity with which players like Messi and Ronaldo can score goals and dominate games.

Although both showed exceptional talent from an early age. What got them to where they are today is consistent hard work, dedication, and confidence in themselves.

Tim Notke a high school basketball coach famously said:

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard!

Tim Notke

Great goal getters are not born, they are made

Besides a good shooting technique, a goal getter needs to have the following characteristics

  • Quick perception and awareness on what is happening on the field
  • The ability to make quick and right decisions. When to sprint, shoot or dribble.
  • Experience in scoring. Each goal made, will result in growing confidence.
  • The ability to deal with stressful situations.

What players should get from these drills

The following soccer shooting drills are very beginner friendly and aimed at team U8 up to U12. The objective should be to improve the shooting technique of your players.

The better your players get, the more important it is to practice shooting at the goal under match like conditions – using opponents, time pressure and more advanced competitions.

When trying to improve the shooting technique of young players, as a coach you should put your focus on:

  • Lots of repetitions, which will result in an automatic shooting technique
  • Small groups
  • Many goals
  • Many soccer balls
  • the precise correction of mistakes.

This is the first part of our new series “Coaching Finishing in Soccer”. We hope you will get something out of it for your next training session!

Shooting Drill 1 – Shot on Goal with a Stationary Ball

Soccer Shooting DrillShooting Drill 2 – Shot on Goal after Dribbling

Soccer Shooting DrillShooting Drill 3 – Shot on Goal after Diagonal Dribbling

Soccer Shooting DrillShooting Drill 4 – Shot on Goal after Dribbling and Turn

Soccer Shooting Drill

eBook – Fundamental Attacking Strategies

Learn how to efficiently open and use space against deeply defending opponents! With detailed solutions for the build-up, training exercises for all skill levels and emphasis on the right coaching.


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